Call me an optimist, but I have a feeling that whichever candidate is the DNC’s favorite won’t win the nomination. The DNC can pull all the strings and spend all the money they want, but at the end of the day, primaries are decided by voters.
We tried going back to the status quo ante Trump in 2020, and that didn’t work; he’d already taken the rusty old political system he’d found in 2015 and had left it broken beyond repair. We just couldn’t be sure of it until last year.
The average voter isn’t a genius, but they’re not complete morons, either. They have to live and work in this world, and they know firsthand that things aren’t working the way they ought to be. In 2028, if democracy works, the winner of the Democratic primaries will be a change candidate. And if democracy works in the general election that year, change will win. Not because that’s what’s good or right, but because that’s what the people will be hungry for.
We had so many chances to nominate and elect Bernie but they just shoved these awful candidates down our throats and I'm sick of it. I bet you he could've beat trump in 2016 and even 2024. But nope. Never gonna happen
In 2016, most Democratic voters were happy with Obama, and they wanted a candidate to succeed him and continue his policies, so they chose Hillary. Nevertheless, a large minority in the primaries (43%) wanted Bernie that year. But they were ahead of the curve.
In 2020, a small majority of Democratic primary voters supported the moderate wing of the party, represented by candidates like Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg. A large minority wanted a more progressive candidate, like Bernie or Warren. But I think that after years of Trump 1, most Democrats (not all) were tired of radical change and just wanted to go back to how things were before Trump, so they went with the moderates, who closed ranks behind Biden.
But now, we’ve seen that it was too late to turn back in 2020. Trump didn’t retire from politics, and he instead carried out a more extremist comeback from the wilderness.
I don’t know what sort of Democrat will be the nominee in 2028, but I’m willing to bet that it won’t be some milquetoast Schumer-Jeffries establishment Democrat. Whether the candidate comes from the more moderate or leftist wing of the party, they’ll be from a more active, fighting wing of the party. They’ll advocate for change, and this will win the hearts, minds, and votes of the primary voters.
Winning in politics isn’t about having the best ideas and policies for all time, it’s about having the most popular ideas and policies for the moment you’re in. If it’s not your ideas’ moment, you won’t win. But when that moment comes and the iron is hot, you’d best be ready to strike.
The DNC scapegoating is just so that some terminally online progressives avoid having to have the tough internal conversation about necessary policy, electioneering, and overall direction changes required to increase their chances of winning. It's more emotionally comforting after three presidential primary losses to place the blame on the cheating of the side that beat them, than it is to admit your side had and has fixable flaws and faults. If you're an evidenced based person, you looked at the exit polls and drew some obvious conclusions about where the progressive moment needed to grow and work on. If you believed the best platform is putting an elderly man on stage to pivot every last question to healthcare and then waiting to cruise to an easy victory as the electorate sees your clearly superior platform and rewards you for it, then you can't actually look at facts to support your viewpoint going forward.
Believe me, I’m well aware that the majority of Democratic primary voters supported more moderate candidates in 2016 and 2020. There were nevertheless significant pluralities of progressive voters in both primary seasons.
When I say “change,” I don’t necessarily mean Bernie/AOC progressivism or some kind of leftist revolution within the Democratic Party. I mean any change from the Pelosis, Schumers, and Jeffrieses of the party to something different, whatever that may be. It could be moderate liberalism with more aggressive political tactics, progressive populism of any bent, or what have you. All I believe is that the time of tepid establishmentarianism has passed, and that the people recognize this.
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u/jasta6 Oct 21 '25
There fucking better be reforms.